King James I of England also James VI of Scotland, leaves Edinburgh for London

1605:

Death of John Stowe

1605:

Stephen Bosckay is elected Prince of Transylvania

1614:

American Indian princess Pocahontas married English colonist John Rolfe in Virginia

1621:

The "Mayflower" sailed from Plymouth, Massachusetts, on a return trip to England

1649:

Founder of Yale University, philanthropist, Elihu Yale born. Although born in America, Yale was taken to England by his family at the age of three, and he never returned.

1649:

John Winthrop, colonizer and first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company dies

1725:

Italian adventurer Giovanni Casanova born

1726:

Benjamin Harrison, signer of the Declaration of Independence born

1784:

Louis Spohr, a contemporary of Beethoven who was almost as big in his day, was born in the German town of Brunswick. He became a touring violin virtuoso, and married a harpist. He never stopped conducting and was a champion of Mozart's music

1792:

George Washington cast the first presidential veto, rejecting a congressional measure for apportioning representatives among the states

1806:

Isaac Quintard of Stanfield, Connecticut, patented the cider mill

1856:

Educator Booker T. Washington. He was the first president and principal developer of Tuskegee Institute. born

1869:

Daniel Bakeman, the last surviving soldier of the Revolutionary War, died at the age of 109

1874:

Johan Strauss's Die Fledemaus premieres in Vienna

1887:

In Tuscumbia, Alabama, teacher Anne Sullivan taught her blind and deaf pupil, Helen Keller, the meaning of the word "water" as spelled out in the Manual Alphabet

Playwright Oscar Wilde lost his criminal libel case against the Marquess of Queensberry, who'd accused the writer of homosexual practices

1900:

Actor Spencer Tracy was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Tracy received two consecutive Academy Awards for best actor.

1908:

Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan born

1908:

Actress Bette Davis was born in Lowell, Massachusetts. She was is best known for her brilliant and intense characterizations of strong women.

1916:

Actor Gregory Peck born

1920:

Novelist Arthur Hailey born

1922:

Actress Gale Storm born

1923:

Firestone Tire and Rubber Company of Akron, Ohio, began the first regular production of "balloon" tires

1926:

Director Roger Corman born

1928:

Singer (The Platters) Tony Williams born

1929:

Actor Nigel Hawthorne born

1931:

Country music producer Cowboy Jack Clement born

1932:

Singer Billy Bland born

1933:

The first operation to remove a lung was performed at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri

1934:

Impressionist Frank Gorshin born

1937:

The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin L. Powell born

1939:

Country singer Tommy Cash born

1941:

Actor Michael Moriarty (Law & Order) born

1942:

Singer Allan Clarke (The Hollies) born

1943:

Actor Max Gail born

1946:

Actress Jane Asher born

1946:

Charles Ives, decades after he wrote his Third Symphony, the work was finally performed, and won him a Pulitzer. Ives, ever gracious, replied, "Prizes are for boys. I'm grown up!"

1946:

Samuel Barber's Cello Concerto was premiered

1949:

Dr. Judith Resnik was born. Dr. Resnik was the second American woman in space. The 36-year-old mission specialist, died on board the space shuttle Challenger January 28, 1986.

1950:

Singer Agnetha Faltskog (ABBA) born

1951:

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death in New York for stealing atomic secrets for the Soviet Union

1955:

Richard J. Daley was elected mayor of Chicago, Illinois, starting one of the most colorful political careers in history

1957:

Vickie Anne Thompson born in Norfolk, Virginia

1964:

Army General Douglas MacArthur died in Washington, D.C. He was 84

1965:

"My Fair Lady" won the Academy Award for best picture, and one of its stars, Rex Harrison, was named best actor; Julie Andrews won best actress for "Mary Poppins."

1966:

Musician (Pearl Jam) Mike McCready born

1967:

Country singer Troy Gentry born

1968:

Singer Paula Cole born

1968:

Violence erupted in several American cities in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr

1975:

Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek died at age 87

1976:

Reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes died of kidney failure during a flight from Acapulco, Mexico, to Houston. He was 72

1983:

France expelled about 50 Soviet diplomats and officials, accusing them of trying to steal military secrets. The Soviet embassy called the expulsions an unjustified political act

1984:

Basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar of the LA Lakers became the highest-scoring player in NBA history. He reached 31,419 career points in a game vs. the Utah Jazz. The record was previously held by Wilt Chamberlain

1985:

Japan notified the United States it would end all commercial whaling by 1988

1985:

Radio stations around the world interrupted their programming for a simultaneous Good Friday broadcast of "We Are The World." It was written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie and recorded by 46 artists for the Africa Relief Fund

1986:

An American soldier and a Turkish woman were killed in the bombing of the La Bell discotheque in West Berlin., The incident prompted the U.S. air raid on Libya a week later

1987:

President Reagan arrived in Canada for a summit with Prime Minister Brian Mulroney

1987:

Fox Broadcasting Company made its prime-time TV debut by airing the premiere episodes of "Married ... With Children" and "The Tracey Ullman Show" three times each

1988:

Governor Michael S. Dukakis won a solid victory in Wisconsin's Democratic presidential primary, while on the Republican side, Vice President George Bush overwhelmed his opposition

1988:

A 15-day hijacking ordeal began as gunmen forced a Kuwait Airways jumbo jet to land in Iran

1989:

Joseph Hazelwood, former captain of the Exxon Valdez supertanker that leaked nearly 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound, surrendered to authorities in New York

1989:

The government of Poland signed an agreement restoring the independent labor movement Solidarity after a seven-year ban

1990:

The United States and the Soviet Union announced that President Bush and Soviet President Gorbachev would hold their first full-scale summit in the United States in late May-early June

1991:

Former Texas Sen. John Tower, his daughter and 21 other people were killed in a commuter plane crash near Brunswick, Georgia

1991:

The space shuttle Atlantis blasted off on a mission that included the deploying of the second of NASA's Great Observatories

1991:

The government reported the nation's jobless rate surged to 6.8 percent in March

1991:

President Bush orders the US Air Force transport planes to drop supplies to Kurdish refugees in northern Iraq

1992:

A medical student (Suada Dilberovic) became the first fatality of war in Bosnia-Herzegovina as Serb nationalists began forcibly opposing the republic's secession from Yugoslavia

1992:

In Washington DC, a crowd estimated by authorities at half a million marched in support of abortion rights

The European Community called for more and tighter sanctions on Serbia to try to force Belgrade's allies in Bosnia to accept a peace plan

1993:

North Carolina defeated Michigan 77-to-71 to win its first NCAA basketball championship in eleven years

1994:

President Clinton presided over a 90-minute town hall meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina, in which he called himself the victim of "false charge" in connection with the Whitewater controversy

1994:

The Commerce Department reported that the Index of Leading Economic Indicators dropped one-tenth of one percentage point in February

1995:

The House of Representatives passed, 246-188, a tax-cut bill, the final major item in the Republican's "Contract With America."

1996:

Accompanied by six children who survived the Oklahoma City bombing, President Clinton bowed his head in silent prayer at the site where 168 people were killed almost a year earlier

1997:

Allen Ginsberg, the counterculture guru who shattered conventions as poet laureate of the Beat Generation, died in New York City at age 70

1998:

In Leeds, England, environment chiefs from the world's top eight industrialized nations announced plans to curb the smuggling of hazardous waste, endangered species and substances that damage the ozone layer

1999:

In Laramie, Wyoming, Russell Henderson pleaded guilty to kidnapping and felony murder in the death of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student